Sports bar with its Crabfries will open this September at PPL Center.

Crabfries, wings and the rest of Chickie's & Pete's popular sports bar fare will be on the menu at Allentown's new hockey arena when it opens this September.

And so ends the worst-kept secret in the Lehigh Valley.

Rumors of a Chickie's & Pete's Crab House and Sports Bar at the PPL Center, where the minor league Phantoms will play, have circulated almost since construction plans were made public. The plans showed a full-service sports bar that would cater to patrons during games and events, and be open to the public when the arena is not in use.

Lehigh Valley Phantoms co-owners Jim and Rob Brooks are expected to announce Thursday that the arena will include an 8,000-square-foot version of the restaurant.

"Given the Phantoms' ties to the Philadelphia Flyers, I can't think of a more fitting or more successful sports bar to bring to the Lehigh Valley than Philadelphia's beloved Chickie's & Pete's," Rob Brooks said in a statement.

The Brooks brothers' company, BDH Development, will own the restaurant and contract with Ovations, PPL Center's food service provider, to operate the sports bar. Both Ovations and Global Spectrum, which will manage the arena, are subsidiaries of Comcast-Spectacor.

Located on the Hamilton Street side of the arena, the restaurant will be open to the public daily for dining and takeout.

The chain, founded in 1977 in Northeast Philadelphia, has expanded rapidly in recent years with eight stand-alone restaurants throughout the Philadelphia region, concessions at Philadelphia sports arenas and locations in the Parx Casino in lower Bucks County and Tropicana casino in Atlantic City. It was named America's Best Sports Bar by ESPN in 2012.

Its only Lehigh Valley presence is in Dorney Park, where the company opened two Crabfries stands in 2011 and a full-service restaurant in 2013, available only to patrons of the South Whitehall Township amusement park.

"We have already enjoyed great success in the area with our locations in Dorney Park and know that Allentown is a great market with very passionate sports fans," Pete Ciarrocchi, president and CEO of Chickie's & Pete's, said in a statement. "This is a natural expansion and perfect fit for the Chickie's & Pete's brand."

The chain combines popular menu items such as chicken wings, crab legs, the trademarked Crabfries, chicken fingers and chicken steaks with a plentiful supply of flat-screen TVs and ice cold beer.

It hasn't been all good news for the sports bar chain.

Chickie's & Pete's landed in the news last month when it agreed to pay $8.5 million to settle allegations brought by former employees in civil lawsuits and the U.S. Department of Labor. The ex-employees and the government claimed the company broke labor laws by improperly taking tips from servers and violating federal minimum wage, overtime and record-keeping requirements.

The settlement covered 1,250 current and former servers and other employees. Lawsuits alleged that the sports bar deducted between 2 and 4 percent of servers' tips, distributing some of the money to bartenders and keeping the rest.

The announcement that the sports bar is coming to the arena brought mixed reactions from downtown restaurant operators.

Several new eateries are expected to open downtown over the next year, including a bar and restaurant operated by one of the founders of Center Valley's Melt in the 11-story Two City Center, which houses National Penn Bancshares' corporate headquarters, and a revival of the Federal Grille in the 500 block of Hamilton Street.

That's in addition to established Hamilton Street eateries such as Allentown Brew Works and the Bay Leaf.

For Jeff Fegley, it means his Allentown Brew Works at 812 Hamilton St. will now have major competition a block away. That, he said, is a very good thing because Chickie's & Pete's is a regional draw that helps elevate Allentown and all of its businesses.

"It's a sign of the momentum happening in downtown Allentown," Fegley said. "Chickie's & Pete's has a distinctive sports bar feel and we're a microbrew pub. We'll both benefit from each other. We're very excited to have them in Allentown."

Americus Center owner Albert Abdouche is rooting for the arena as hard as anyone, but he worries that the new sports bar will only poach customers from downtown restaurants. Abdouche's $13 million plan to restore and reopen his 13-story hotel at Sixth and Hamilton streets includes a first-floor sports bar.

"It'll probably eat into my business," Abdouche said. "I'd like to see the arena encourage people to go out into the community to spend, rather than trying to keep everyone at the arena. They're getting too greedy."